Had a great time at GenCon. I'll update this as I have time. Hopefully I'll get it all written up before I forget everything.
Thursday:
ChampionshipsChampionships didn't start until 2:00 this year, so I had a free morning. I went to the dealer hall but in about 5 minutes I found myself heading over to the dealer hall for a demo of the board game Fallen Land. It was fun, and I might end up buying it someday. But the main event for Thursday was the championships. I brought the familiar Caedus/Barriss combination - this time putting them on the Skiff to provide survivability and extend their reach.
--Dancing on the Skiff (GenCon 2017 9th place/18)--
54 Darth Caedus, Sith Lord
31 Barriss Offee, Rogue Jedi
28 Mira of Nar Shaddaa
25 Barada on Desert Skiff
20 Queen Amanoa
14 Exar Kun, Dark Force Spirit
11 Freedon Nadd, Dark Force Spirit
10 Squib Trader
4 Sith Recruit
3 XT-6 Droid
(200pts. 10 activations)
http://www.bloomilk.com/Squad/178407/dancing-on-the-skiff--gencon-2017-9th-place-18-Map: Simulation Deck
Round 1: Versus AceAce's blastbugging Vong
This looked pretty much like an auto-loss. I rushed the commanders with a fully loaded skiff, and I got pretty close. Then two rolls went against me. First, when he killed the skiff, Caedus rolled a 1 so I couldn't even use the Recruit to reroll it. Dead Caedus - he did nothing. But I had moved the skiff close enough that Barriss and Mira could reach the Subcommander. Mira hit him for 40dmg, and then Barriss based him and survived to the next round. Barriss then killed him, but he also got Reserves on the next init. All of his scouts became useless at the very time that he got a new attacker, and he was able to take out Barriss and Mira for the win. If I hadn't lost Caedus and he didn't get Reserves I might have actually won this! But maybe not. In any case, I was very proud of getting even 1 point here.
Round 2: Versus DarkDracul's Ghost Crew
I'll have to check my notes on this one to remember the details but it was pretty close. I won 2-1.
Round 3: Versus DarthJim's Savage Uvak
I was able to get put everyone on the skiff so that the Uvak couldn't do much. I think it hit the skiff once but then Caedus came out and killed it before it could do much damage. He did some damage with the rest of his squad, but had invested a lot of points in the Uvak (Watto+Celeste+Sidious to pawn it), so the fact that he didn't get much out of it gave me a huge advantage. I got 3 points, but I don't remember if he got a point out of it.
Round 4: Versus Timmerb's Femme Fatale
I played this horribly. The matchup was very much in my favor, though. Enough that I won despite my play errors. I forgot Amanoa's CE at least twice. I didn't advance as quickly as I could with the Skiff. Although that may have been a good thing. Tim killed the skiff and everyone made the save. I had only moved 8 instead of 16, and that let me disembark Caedus. He had rolled that 1 against the Vong when falling off the skiff, and by disembarking him I didn't risk losing him to a dead skiff. But it also slowed me down. It took some work to chase down all of his slippery attackers. I managed to kill them all by the end of time, but just barely. I didn't have time to spin in gambit to get up to 200, so I was left with a 2-1 win.
Round 5: Versus spryguy's LukeLeiaSpeeder +Kyle/Jan
I had a decent lead in the game against Spry at one point. Jan, the Speeder, R2, and Crix were all dead, I still had a bunch of Force points, and he had almost no damage on my damage dealers (just poured it into the Skiff). I made a bad error - leaving Exar outside of the main combat room and planning to move him into the room early in the next round. Turns out I needed him in the room before I had a chance to move him. On top of that, I didn't recognize Kyle's top dmg output. Top of the round I pulled Kyle across 3 Mines squares adjacent to Caedus. But 3 Mines saves (Kyle made all 3 saves) and then attacking with Caedus didn't kill Kyle. If Exar were in the room, the Mines and Shields saves would have been harder, but more importantly I would have spent Exar's FPs on SBM, leaving Caedus with enough to Master Illusion twice when Kyle attacked him. But instead Caedus had only 1 fp and went down quickly. With Exar in the room it would have been save 20s on Master Illusion and Caedus would have almost certainly lived. If I had simply had Exar in the room, I'd put my chances in that skirmish at 80-20, maybe better. That's not to take anything away from Spry - I made the mistake and he won because he played without making such mistakes.
That left me at 9 points and in 9th place. 7th place also had 9 points, while 6th place had 10 points. I probably didn't have the tiebreaker, so getting that extra point against Tim probably would have still left me in 7th place and out of the top 6 (playoffs). But if I had beaten Spry that would have put me into 3rd place where he was. That's how close things were in this tournament. I had a blast, though. The meta was really good this year - I even had fun playing against Vong if only because earning that one point felt like such an accomplishment.